Ponds in Canada

[callingcolleen1]

Everything in my greenhouse growing nicely with the increased amount of sun these days. I have put colored gravel in the miniature sucullent dishes. Newly transplanted tomatos going nice too.

The old tankfish tank in the greenhouse had pea green water, but happy to report that Sissy's idea of cotton batting in the filter has proved to be just the trick needed to rid the tank of pea green water. I placed a net filled with the batting where the water pours from the filter, and it worked great. Water is all clean now!

 

[addy1]

looking good there Colleen

 

[j.w]

I see you have your little tommy starts growing in there too............yum!

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes, l got too much growing and need to get stuff outside soon .... it is really really windy here right now and the temperture is now warming up, supposed to be nice tomorrow, right now it is close to 50 degrees, but the wind is howling at over 30 MPH and getting worse ......

 

[j.w]

We had that bad wind here this morning and sounds like it moved up your way. I didn't grow any tomatoes this year. I usually do from seeds. They are so much more tastier than the store bought ones.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes, much tastier for sure, and I grow the wild tomatoes and I have been collecting the same seed for 20 years at least. I never buy tomato seeds, it is fun to to see what kind of tomatoes I will get this year! Every year is different!

Today at the river, it was very windy indeed. See puppies run from the monster storm clouds! Thank goodness I am now back home where we are more sheltered from much of the wind as my house is in the valley by the creek, protected from the monster wind.

 

[j.w]

Run for your lives doggies! May be a mean night for ya tonight Colleen.

When you say wild tomatoes are you just using seed from other tomatoes that you have grown in the past or did you start out w/a wild plant you bought somewhere like South America where they come from? Tomatoes used to be fuzzy on the outside skin and not very tasty long, long ago.

 

[callingcolleen1]

They are wild tomatoes cause I have had the seed for over 20 years, they used to be Roma, oxheart, cherry, and yellow tomatoes, but they have crossed so many times over the many years, not sure what I will get anymore. Some times I get Yellow oxheart, those were the best, one year I had yellow cherry tomatoes, one year I had Roma shaped cherry tomatoes, and it just anybody's guess what they will turn out to be. Every year it is something slightly different and exciting to look forward to. They are all unique and truly wild as they have crossed so many times it is like two dogs in a back ally, not sure what the offspring will look like!

I also have "Amish" tomatoes from the "Amish community"! Those tomatoes look similar to oxheart, but the tomatoes get very very large, two and three pounds tomatoes, and the leafs don't even look close to a modern day tomatoes. The seeds may have crossed now with the others but sometimes I still get a tomato plant with weird leafs like the Amish tomatoes.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Well yesterday the sun was nice and brighly shining deep into the pond, encouraging the plants to start growing again. The water was still ice cold, but the shallow areas warm up nice in the sun. The fish were starting to move around more, again, and hopefully we don't get too many more cold snowy days, supposed to snow and rain Sunday... just when the pond starts to warm up, then they throw snow in the forecast! Oh well it won't stay long cause the sun is moving higher in the sky every day!

 

[j.w]

Very cool on the tomatoes you have been able to grow for so many yrs! One thing I like about tomato plants is how you can break a branch off, stick it in the dirt and watch it grow another tomato plant for free!

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes, that is called a "clone", you get the same identical fruit , same identical plant, they do that with many trees to ensure the fruit is all then same. Trouble is with cloning, eventually the clone become weak and will eventually end up with a crop that can be wipped out by just one bug or diease. If you plant a genetically different plant each time, you will avoid a massive crop failure.

If they had done this with apples for instance, they would not need to apply so many chemicals herbicides and stuff, cause the disease would not wipe out the entire grove. But we all like things the same, and new produce can be a hard sell, so sadly we do lots of cloning. Johnny Appleseed would be horrified!

 

[callingcolleen1]

I can't believe I still have snow in the north side of my house and it is now well past the middle of April! Last night the temperature was down to Minus 10 C (20 F). I had ice on some parts of the pond this morning! Please, NO more SNOW! It is the middle of April for "Poppy's" sake!

But in spite of the morning, the afternoon was not to bad, if you were in the direct sun it felt not too cold, and now currently at plus 4 Celsius, or 39 Farhrenheit.

The water in my pond is ICE cold, but the fish look very good, the water has been crystal clear for over 20 years! My pond NeVeR ceases to amaze me! EVEN in the very early spring!

 

[addy1]

Your cold is heading down here, we are to be 75 or so today, then dropping to 32 at night and 60's during the day. Cool spring this year.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes very cold late spring, my trees have not even got leaves yet! We should have at least some trees with leaves by now!
The last several years we have had colder than normal springs, seems to be a trend these days. But I think this spring is later than last year for sure. I have pictures from the last week of April and will post on my thread later this month and compare the yellow flags growth, but I suspect it will be behind this year.

 

[sissy]

You need to get you a green house that fits over your whole property and then the fishies and poppy and bear will like there homemade weather .Just think you could have fresh veggies all year round .